The Candice Malcolm Show - Ep 12 ｜ Pierre Poilievre ｜ Holding Trudeau to account

00:00:00.000 I think he said to himself, I can do anything I want, you know, no one questions anything.

00:00:07.440 It seems that the normal parliamentary accountability mechanisms are obliterated.

00:00:13.980 So I think the group of them around Trudeau said, we now have unfettered access to the

00:00:19.300 public purse with no scrutiny, and anybody who asks us a question about it will simply

00:00:24.380 accuse them of nasty partisanship in the middle of a pandemic, and we'll assert our pure motives

00:00:30.980 and we'll do whatever the hell we please.

00:00:32.940 That's what I think, that's where I think their headspace was.

00:00:36.120 And frankly, I think if the media had been doing its job, he probably would have been

00:00:40.260 on his toes and he probably wouldn't have been so sloppy in this corruption.

00:00:43.680 How can Canadians hold the minority liberal government to account?

00:00:46.760 Prime Minister Justin Trudeau shut down Parliament just as he shut down the economy in response

00:00:52.040 to COVID-19, choosing instead to hold daily press conferences with hand-selected friendly

00:00:58.860 journalists from the mainstream media.

00:01:01.080 There was no oversight, no accountability, and no transparency, just daily propaganda sessions

00:01:06.580 with liberal journalists lobbying softball questions at their favorite liberal celebrity.

00:01:11.840 Can you describe specifically what your self-isolation means both for you and your family and your

00:01:17.660 wife?

00:01:18.140 You're outside right now.

00:01:19.480 Is your wife still going outside? 1.00

00:01:21.680 Is your family still going outside?

00:01:22.800 What does self-isolation actually mean for your family?

00:01:25.040 And what are you telling your children about the heightened sense of concern in the country?

00:01:29.740 And also, how are you explaining some of the political decisions that you're making?

00:01:33.540 Okay, that is the Prime Minister of Canada on this Tuesday morning, and I'll just say what

00:01:37.960 everyone is thinking before we get into the meat of what he said.

00:01:40.740 Yes, he did get a haircut.

00:01:42.080 When Canadians began to learn about the damage that Trudeau had done during his time,

00:01:45.960 racking up half a trillion dollars in debt, handing out the doomed $900 million We Charity

00:01:51.640 contract, and the mysterious case of 20,000 missing infrastructure projects, Trudeau shut

00:01:58.420 down the investigations by proroguing Parliament.

00:02:01.940 On today's episode of the True North Speaker series, I sit down with one of the few figures

00:02:06.600 in Canada willing to challenge our Prime Minister and hold him accountable for his scandalous

00:02:11.920 ethics violations and the disastrous fiscal policies that put our entire economy, our

00:02:17.600 entire country, at risk.

00:02:19.380 Pierre Polyev is the Conservative Member of Parliament for the Ottawa-based riding of Carleton,

00:02:24.920 where he's been the MP since 2004.

00:02:28.000 Polyev serves as the Conservative Party's finance critic, and he was instrumental in drawing out

00:02:33.280 new information and exposing the many contradictions and changing narrative Trudeau offered during

00:02:39.360 the We Scam testimonies. I really enjoyed watching him hold Trudeau directly accountable during his

00:02:45.320 Parliamentary Committee hearings, and I really enjoyed sitting down with Pierre to talk about

00:02:50.120 all of the problems facing Ottawa, and how a Conservative government would offer a better vision for Canada.

00:02:57.100 I hope you enjoy our conversation. Let me know what you think in the comments section,

00:03:00.500 and please share this video with friends and like-minded Canadians.

00:03:09.360 Pierre, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for coming on to the Speaker Series. It's great to

00:03:19.360 have you today.

00:03:20.720 Great to be with you.

00:03:22.280 Well, so before we get into all of the politics and everything that's going on in Ottawa these days,

00:03:27.220 I want to talk a little bit about you and your background. So you are a Ottawa area MP. You've been

00:03:33.680 representing the people of Nepean for, what, 15 years now? Since 2004, and it was Nepean-Carlton. I

00:03:43.720 unfortunately lost Nepean in the redistribution, so I'm now on the Carlton area, which is sort of

00:03:48.740 southwest Ottawa. Okay, interesting. And but before that, you are from Alberta, which I was just reading

00:03:55.580 your background, your history. It seems like you really cut your teeth in Alberta politics.

00:04:00.820 You were just mentioning off camera that you work for the Byfields, who were the founders of the

00:04:05.940 Alberta Report. So why don't you tell us about young Pierre in the early days, working in politics?

00:04:12.220 Well, when I was a teenager, I went to a few meetings for Ralph Klein's Progressive Conservatives

00:04:19.640 and Preston Manning's Reformers, and met Preston Manning when I was 16 years old. He represented my

00:04:25.800 southwest Calgary neighbourhood in Parliament, and got an intern working for a local Calgary MP when I was

00:04:34.740 16 or 17 years old, and made 600 bucks a month. And it was an hour and a half bus ride, both each way.

00:04:45.240 So that was how I started off in politics. It was not glamorous, but I was thrilled at that age to get

00:04:51.440 involved. I then became Jason Kenney's intern when I was 18 or 19 years old. And he was one of my great

00:04:59.360 mentors. When I was in my early 20s, I moved to Ottawa to work for Stockwell Day. And not long after that, I

00:05:06.600 decided to take a crazy gamble and run for a Conservative nomination for the newly merged party in an Ottawa seat that we

00:05:16.280 hadn't won since 1984. And I've been elected six times since.

00:05:22.060 So tell us a little bit about the riding that you represent, because I think a lot of people in Western

00:05:27.520 Canada, you know, they think of Ottawa as a very left-wing kind of government town. And yet you seem to

00:05:33.200 represent a Conservative stronghold. So tell us a little bit about the riding that you represent.

00:05:37.620 Well, it is basically south of the airport, and then it goes west all the way to where the Ottawa

00:05:46.860 Senators Stadium is on the 417 Highway. I'm going to estimate about 75% of my residents are suburban,

00:05:56.260 and about 25% are village or semi-rural. All of my riding is in the city of Ottawa. There are a lot of

00:06:04.240 government workers, a fair amount of high-tech employment as well. There is a small farming

00:06:10.040 population that sort of shrinks a little bit each year, unfortunately. But, you know, it had not

00:06:18.280 been Conservative since 1984. The Conservatives had lost it in 88, 93, 97, 2000, before I won it in 2004.

00:06:29.220 So it can be a bit of a swing riding. It's gone both ways. And right now, it's the only blue

00:06:35.140 riding on the federal map in the city of Ottawa. We've got seven Liberals and one Conservative. So

00:06:40.680 I'm the chair of the Ottawa Conservative Caucus. Well, good for you. I mean, I think that the

00:06:46.480 Conservatives definitely have their work cut out for them in Ontario in general. I think that's one

00:06:52.100 of the other questions that I wanted to ask you is that it really feels like the country is divided.

00:06:56.340 I saw some polling that came out last week that basically showed that the Liberals are more

00:07:02.160 favourable everywhere west of Ontario and everywhere, or sorry, everywhere east of Ontario and everywhere

00:07:07.620 west, the Conservatives are up considerably. And there seems to be that divide. So, you know,

00:07:13.320 for Western Canadians watching this podcast here, what is it that Western Canadians don't know or don't

00:07:19.640 really understand about the Ontario voter?

00:07:24.020 Well, you know, I'm in a unique position because my riding is in Ottawa, which is the nation's capital,

00:07:30.860 and it's right on the border with Quebec. So I, you know, from where I'm sitting in my basement here,

00:07:35.540 I've got five provinces west of me, five provinces east of me. And it gives me a bit of an insight into

00:07:41.960 both sides. You know, I think that the differences are not as great as they seem. We have right now is an

00:07:52.000 extremely divisive prime minister. You know, we've had, we have a conservative provincial government in

00:07:58.080 Ontario, just like people do in Alberta and Saskatchewan. So at a provincial level, we're, you know, pretty much

00:08:04.180 have the same governing philosophy in charge and victorious in this provinces as, you know, the

00:08:10.840 Western prairie provinces do. But the difference is that we have a prime minister who's decided to

00:08:17.880 mercilessly wage economic warfare against Alberta, Saskatchewan, parts of northern and interior British

00:08:27.120 Columbia with his hostility to the resource sector. So in Ontario, the big population,

00:08:34.160 centers, Toronto, Ottawa, et cetera, are not directly resource driven economies. They haven't felt the

00:08:44.140 brunt yet of that war. They will. I mean, look, Toronto's financial sector has made billions of

00:08:51.300 dollars investing, right, rightly in the energy sector. So Torontonians will feel the pain if this

00:08:59.760 idiocy goes on. Ottawa residents will feel the pain as well, because of course, the public service 1.00

00:09:07.640 relies on the tax revenues that the resource sector has paid so consistently over so many decades.

00:09:15.900 So the whole country will ultimately suffer from this anti-resource agenda. But Albertans and

00:09:22.920 Saskatchewanians are just the first to feel it and thus the first to be justifiably angry about it.

00:09:28.960 You know, I read a lot of the sort of Laurentian elite commentary in the major newspapers. And it

00:09:36.720 seems like the consensus is basically that, you know, the oil sands are bad for the environment,

00:09:42.320 and it's just inevitable that we have to phase them out. And that's just the role of the federal

00:09:46.920 government. And also that a government cannot win power. They cannot get votes in specifically Quebec,

00:09:54.220 but also Ontario, without, you know, a green agenda and a very ambitious sort of green environmentalist

00:10:01.780 plan. Do you accept that premise? Or what do you make of the elites that say that?

00:10:09.100 Well, they're not talking to ordinary people, I can say in my riding, I overtly campaign in favor of

00:10:14.400 pipelines, the Energy East pipeline was going to run right through my riding. And I was happy to support it

00:10:20.120 from the very beginning. In fact, my liberal opponent tried to pretend he was for pipelines as well,

00:10:26.140 because he knew that that's where the population was. Everyday people understand that pipelines make

00:10:32.860 sense. In fact, what a lot of conservatives miss is Trudeau doesn't overtly or publicly oppose

00:10:40.120 pipelines. He does it in all of his actions. He pretends that he's trying to get them built.

00:10:44.800 But in reality, he uses all the levers of the state to stop it from happening. So he wouldn't

00:10:51.100 be doing that. Pipelines weren't popular. You look back at his statements in the House of Commons,

00:10:57.500 he very rarely confesses his real opinion on pipelines. He always says, oh, we're trying to

00:11:02.980 work together with all the different groups and make it happen. And we're going through all the steps

00:11:07.340 and gosh, golly, darn, I'm trying so hard. It just doesn't seem to work out. Meanwhile, he's using all of 0.85

00:11:13.360 the bureaucratic machinery to stop it from occurring. But my point here is the population

00:11:19.660 overwhelmingly supports pipelines in every region. There's even strong support in Quebec for pipelines.

00:11:25.500 We know that there's a $14 billion natural gas pipeline and liquefaction project that awaits

00:11:31.180 federal approval in the SAG name, for which there's overwhelming support by the Quebec government.

00:11:36.120 So there is public support everywhere. And in fact, the province that was most devastated to learn

00:11:41.400 that the Energy East project was killed was actually not Alberta or Saskatchewan, though they

00:11:46.840 were justifiably outraged. It was New Brunswick because New Brunswickers were going to refine 1.00

00:11:52.720 all of that Western petroleum had the pipeline gone ahead. A million barrels a day would have arrived

00:11:59.060 from Alberta in New Brunswick. So we have national support for pipelines. Where we have failed is in

00:12:06.420 properly exposing the fact that there is a single obstacle to pipelines in this country.

00:12:11.860 And his name is Justin Trudeau.

00:12:13.580 That's a really interesting point. And I hadn't really thought of it. But now that I do, you know,

00:12:17.840 when you're looking for examples of how the liberals oppose pipelines, it's usually like

00:12:23.100 something that Gerald Butts said like 15 years ago, or something that Trudeau said sort of sneakily

00:12:28.440 in a French language debate that they don't sort of overtly come out. And I recall even at the sort of

00:12:33.240 beginning, they sort of beat their chest and said, look, we've actually had more pipelines of proof

00:12:38.180 than the Harper government, which wasn't true. But that was sort of the line that the liberals took.

00:12:43.440 But it does seem like there is a shift going on. We saw it with Chrystia Freeland in her sort of first

00:12:49.500 press conference as finance minister, stating that the regrowth or the recreation of the economy after

00:12:56.740 the COVID lockdowns here was going to be built on green, you know, plans and schemes. And there's

00:13:03.180 been a lot of speculation about what's to come in the upcoming throne speech. So do you think that

00:13:09.320 that perhaps the liberals are taking that shift, that they're going to do a sort of far left shift as

00:13:15.320 what is sort of being implied in the media these days?

00:13:18.340 Yes, I expect a radical new experiment. Gerald Butts, who effectively is running the government,

00:13:27.240 put together a group of people to write a report on what the post-COVID Canadian economy should look

00:13:35.380 like. And surprise, surprise, it came up with a $49.9 billion green plan. I love how it was $49.9 billion.

00:13:46.000 You know, it's kind of like, you know, when you're buying a t-shirt at the store, they don't want to

00:13:52.500 charge you $50, they charge you $49.99. So that you think it's a bargain. And, you know, for the very,

00:14:01.500 very low time, a low price with this limited time offer, if you just call this 1-800 number,

00:14:07.860 Gerald will sell you a green economy for $49 billion. But, you know, I can tell you the first

00:14:14.840 thing is, if you are a liberal insider, you are going to get fabulously wealthy off of this. There

00:14:21.240 will be many millionaires, maybe even a few billionaires that will result from this plan if

00:14:28.540 it goes ahead. There'll be subsidies for phony renewable programs, fake windmill projects, fake

00:14:37.500 solar projects that produce very little electricity. There'll be all kinds of funky new science fiction

00:14:44.400 schemes that don't actually produce energy or output, but that are dressed up with all the

00:14:50.720 right public relations. Basically, you know, if you want to sell a pig in Ottawa over the next

00:14:58.320 several months, paint it green and bring it to Ottawa and Justin Trudeau will buy it with Canadian

00:15:03.700 tax dollars. We saw, we've seen this before, of course, in Ontario, where they had a Green Energy Act

00:15:08.880 and they were paying $0.90 a kilowatt hour for something that was worth $0.03. So you can imagine

00:15:15.300 going to a grocery store and paying $0.90 for an item that's worth $0.03. Well, obviously, you're going

00:15:19.840 to bankrupt yourself pretty quickly. And the result was it doubled electricity prices. It created something

00:15:25.360 that the Ontario Association of Food Banks called energy poverty, a phenomenon where poor working class

00:15:32.880 people were literally walking into the food bank with their power bill and saying, I can't keep the

00:15:39.040 lights on and feed myself. So I'm going to have to come here for some canned goods. And meanwhile,

00:15:45.580 well-connected liberal insiders managed to land these monstrous contracts. So you have millionaires

00:15:52.700 on Bay Street making a fortune off of little old ladies who can't afford to turn the lights on in the 1.00

00:15:59.240 morning. And this will happen on a grand scale if the Liberals go ahead with the schemes they've been

00:16:04.960 speculating and hinting at in the media over the last several months. You know, it's wild to me,

00:16:10.860 Pierre, that after living through the Green Energy Act and living through McGinty and Wynn and what

00:16:15.160 happened, I mean, I remember there were news stories every week of someone's energy bill where it was

00:16:20.300 like $1,200 a month and, you know, there was just nothing that they could do. It was devastating to so

00:16:25.340 many people across Ontario. And at the same time, we were seeing manufacturing plants shut down,

00:16:31.280 the affordability, you know, not able to compete against, you know, like organizations like

00:16:38.200 manufacturing groups in the United States. How is it that we get ourselves this place where we're

00:16:43.760 going through it again? Like, like, how is it that people in Ontario aren't like, hey, wait a minute,

00:16:48.120 I recognize this. I've seen this before. Maybe we should be a little bit more cautious before we jump in

00:16:54.400 onto this green, onto this green plant. I mean, I don't know if you can answer that question, but

00:16:59.080 isn't there prevailing common sense that we've tried this? It failed massively. Let's not do it

00:17:04.180 again. Well, the government is making the same mistake all over again. It reminds me of Kipling's

00:17:11.500 poem in which he said that just as the dog returns to its vomit and the sow returns to her mire, the 0.97

00:17:17.600 burned fool's bandaged finger goes wobbling back to the fire. You know, we, we, you're right, we know, 0.98

00:17:23.660 we know exactly how this ends. Uh, it ends in tears. Um, but it ends, uh, there's a very happy

00:17:30.920 ending for a small group of highly influential people, uh, that will dress up their latest

00:17:36.500 scheme as green and they will get monstrous grants and subsidies and handouts from various federal

00:17:44.920 departments. Um, and I will all be called, uh, investments. Um, although in the real world,

00:17:52.180 if you have a viable investment, you don't need a government handout because it will pay

00:17:56.420 for itself through its resulting revenues. Um, but, uh, again, it will, it will, uh, vaporize

00:18:02.120 tens of billions of dollars of hard earned money and make a very small group of privileged and

00:18:07.240 well-connected people extremely rich. Well, that's, uh, that's the liberal story. I think in a nutshell,

00:18:12.460 uh, we've been talking a little bit about how Trudeau alienates Western Canadians and, and how

00:18:18.220 the country is very divided, but we've also seen a rise in separatism, the separatist sentiment

00:18:23.560 over in Quebec, uh, that, you know, the, the block Quebec law was basically decimated, um,

00:18:29.180 and, and hardly won any seats whatsoever. In 2011, we saw the surge of the NDP over there. Uh, but,

00:18:34.940 but in the last decade, they've sort of creeped back. So maybe you can help us understand, like,

00:18:39.700 what is it about Dustin Trudeau that has led to the rise of, of a separatist party in Quebec

00:18:45.040 as well? Well, I just think this, uh, centralized approach to governance, uh, where you've got a

00:18:52.700 big, powerful PMO in Ottawa that runs the economy and tries to run everybody's lives, uh, is a very

00:19:00.800 divisive force. Um, ironically, the, the purpose of it is to pull power inward, but what it does

00:19:07.780 is to push people away. Um, because, you know, humans want to have control of their own lives.

00:19:14.040 That's why Quebec has always been, uh, focused rightly so on protecting its own jurisdiction and

00:19:20.600 keeping the federal government out of its affairs. So in a sense, I, I think there's a common cause

00:19:26.240 between Albertans, uh, Western Canadians in general and Quebecers in the desire to keep the federal

00:19:33.720 government out of their backyard and let the, and, and, and allow people to, the, the, the popular

00:19:39.540 sovereignty, uh, over their own local and provincial decisions. Um, so again, in a heartbeat, I think

00:19:45.960 it's, uh, it's a prime minister who, who, who is obsessed with controlling people's lives. And there's

00:19:51.760 a similar backlash in Quebec to the kind that we witness, uh, in other parts of the country.

00:19:56.760 It's interesting. Okay. Let's, let's walk through sort of Justin Trudeau's prime ministership. Um,

00:20:02.940 because, you know, obviously he was sort of swept in, he's a famous guy. He had a famous last name,

00:20:08.120 a famous father, his father, you know, for, for all the criticism about him, uh, you know, he, he was a

00:20:14.080 socialist and he destroyed so much of the Canadian economy. Uh, but, but, but at least he was sort of an

00:20:19.440 accomplished individual. He was a lawyer, he was well-educated. He had, he had, you know, obviously thought a

00:20:25.900 lot about Canada and the kind of country that he wanted to lead. Justin Trudeau, not so much, uh,

00:20:32.780 you know, he sort of came in on this sort of celebrity style, you know, famous guy, charismatic,

00:20:39.600 articulate or whatever. Uh, you know, what, what, what, what has the impact of his prime ministership

00:20:45.800 been? He, he's been in office for about five years now. Uh, you know, what, what has changed over

00:20:50.800 those five years? Well, you know, first of all, it's interesting observation with the left, you know,

00:20:55.520 the modern left is very elitist, um, and, uh, intellectually stuck up their whole, uh, their

00:21:02.640 whole kind of narrative is that they're smarter than everyone else. That's why they should be

00:21:06.220 running everyone else's life. Um, and they love to denigrate the intellect of conservatives. Um,

00:21:13.400 you know, Oh, you, you must be a simpleton if you think that way. Uh, we're told, um, but 0.96

00:21:18.860 a knuckle, a knuckle dragging, uh, Neanderthal as, as Bill Morneau once said, right?

00:21:24.000 Right. Exactly. You're, you must not be very sophisticated, but then they elect this guy

00:21:27.800 who, you know, conclude the confuses decimal with decibel, who, uh, who has a, who is a gaffe

00:21:35.420 machine who accidentally admits that China's his, the dictatorship in China is his favorite

00:21:42.640 model of governance, who thinks budgets balance themselves, things that everyone agrees, uh, or, 0.96

00:21:48.020 or should agree are utterly ridiculous. And I think that the pathology here on the left is that

00:21:54.660 they'd say, look, you know, he might be a dummy, but he's our dumb. Um, and, um, and ultimately he's 0.98

00:22:01.380 not running the country. Uh, other people who share, uh, the agenda of the, of the far left are running

00:22:09.860 it for him. And he's simply a puppet, uh, to, to the Gerald Butts, uh, establishment. And so I think

00:22:16.820 that's why he's been able to, the left, which is so intellectually pretentious, um, is happy to have

00:22:23.880 someone as unsophisticated, uh, as Mr. Trudeau is because they, they know that he's ultimately being

00:22:30.440 run, uh, by those who share the left wing agenda. Um, what is the result of this? Uh, it means that a

00:22:38.060 small group of people are getting richer and power, more powerful, uh, using the state as their

00:22:44.420 instrument. Um, and, uh, they have him, uh, fronting it all, a friendly face, um, a handsome, modern,

00:22:55.380 open looking fellow, um, is sitting at the front of this, this, this whole apparatus, but behind the

00:23:03.040 scenes, uh, a very well, um, a very sophisticated group of insiders is pulling all the levers and

00:23:09.780 running the government to their own profit and to their own benefit and to everyone else's detriment.

00:23:14.900 Well, you, you sort of seeing that now with the, uh, you know, just another scandal. I mean,

00:23:19.400 it seems like scandal on top of scandal with this government, but the idea that the, uh, prime

00:23:24.080 minister's chief of staff's own husband was lobbying the government and ended up walking away with a

00:23:29.520 contract for $84 million or something that, that, that, that's sort of, you know, to, to, to the

00:23:35.060 Canadian out of work, who's lost their small business or something like that. You know, you

00:23:39.980 look at, you look at this sort of insider-ness of Ottawa and you kind of just scratch your head and

00:23:45.060 wonder like, you know, what, what, what is this all for? But to me, Pierre, the thing that I worry

00:23:50.540 about, and I honestly don't know what the answer to this question is, is you look at the deficit.

00:23:54.240 I mean, I, I, I, I, someone who, uh, you know, very opposed running deficits. I think government

00:23:59.480 should be run like businesses or like households. And that the idea of even a modest $10 billion

00:24:04.760 deficit isn't good for the country, that, that, that, that, that even though interest rates are low,

00:24:09.480 you know, we're still paying about 10% of, of total revenue that the government collects just to,

00:24:14.900 you know, service the debt and, and to bondholders. Uh, the, the idea of, of, of, of a $400

00:24:21.120 billion deficit is quite frankly, terrifying. And I have no idea how any government would erase that

00:24:28.140 deficit, let alone work towards paying off a trillion dollar debt, uh, that, that the surely

00:24:33.300 will get dumped on the, on the shoulders of our children and our grandchildren. Uh,

00:24:39.440 how is Justin Trudeau even going to continue governing in this fashion? I mean, he's talking

00:24:44.820 about continuing to have, to have a 10% of, of GDP, uh, deficit rate. Uh, you know, how, how is it

00:24:52.580 even structurally fiscally possible without a massive increase in taxes? Or is, is there something

00:24:58.720 like that coming? Is there, is there a wealth tax coming? Is there a massive increase in taxes? I mean,

00:25:03.960 the top tax rate in Ontario is already over 50%. It's hard to imagine how much higher you can go,

00:25:09.260 but I, I, I just, I just wonder, you know, for you as an elected official and someone who is in,

00:25:14.360 in government, I mean, you're opposition, but you're still representing Canadians. You know,

00:25:19.160 what do you, what do you tell people about the, the, the, the fiscal situation in Canada right now?

00:25:25.540 Well, let me just share some, some basic facts that are actually quite startling. So the government

00:25:32.400 will say, well, we've got a crisis. The COVID shutdown is the reason we have this monstrous deficit. So

00:25:37.300 let's compare the deficit to other crises, uh, in world war one, our debt, our deficit to GDP

00:25:45.280 was 9%. In the great depression, it was about 6%. In the great recession of 2008, nine,

00:25:59.220 it was about three and a half percent right now. Our deficit sits at around 17% GDP. So in other

00:26:07.280 words, our deficit as a share of our GDP. So this is automatically adjusted for inflation and for

00:26:12.940 the changed size of our economy. Our deficit is now, uh, twice what it was in world war one.

00:26:20.700 It is, uh, approximately six times what it was during the great global recession. Uh, it is three

00:26:29.840 times higher than it was at its peak in 1932 in the great depression. The only time we've ever had a

00:26:36.620 deficit this big was back in 1943 when we had a 23% of GDP deficit. And that was of course, right smack

00:26:44.520 in the middle of world war two. But the difference there, by the way, is that by 1947, Canada was

00:26:51.340 running monstrous surpluses. Our soldiers came home with all of the wages they had earned and then

00:26:57.560 weren't allowed to spend. And they spent it in the economy and they bought homes and they built

00:27:02.220 a great generation, uh, uh, thereafter. And they gave birth to the baby boomers, et cetera. And we

00:27:08.000 had this surge of, uh, of revenue and the government didn't spend it. In fact, spending went down.

00:27:14.000 And so we paid off huge amounts of debt. We had surpluses of 5% of GDP in 1947, which would be like,

00:27:21.500 imagine today if we had $120 billion surplus, that's how big their surpluses were in the post-war

00:27:27.580 period. So yet people say, the liberals say, Oh yeah, but in the war, the deficits were a little

00:27:32.000 bit bigger. Yes, but they paid them off quickly. As soon as the crisis was over, they quickly went

00:27:38.060 back into surplus, paid it off. And we had another 30 years of prosperity as a result. So I'm just

00:27:44.460 giving that as a perspective. Um, so right now our debts that our debt, our debt now moved to the debt

00:27:50.760 is, um, it's, it's well over a trillion dollars. We've gone from a debt that was a third of our

00:27:57.180 economy, 30% of GDP to 50% in just, uh, six months. So 30% of GDP to 50% of GDP in six months to put

00:28:08.700 that in perspective. We hit a debt wall in Canada in 1996, where the world wouldn't lend us any money

00:28:15.140 anymore. And it was basically a financial collapse. The G the IMF put up warnings about us. The, the

00:28:21.400 wall street journal called us a fiscal bad third world fiscal basket case, but that happened when

00:28:26.320 the debt to GDP ratio was 66.6%. So we've eliminated more than half of the buffer between where, between

00:28:35.820 our previous debt level and the maximum debt we can sustain as a government. We've eliminated more

00:28:42.360 than half of that buffer in six months. So I know I'm throwing a lot of information out, but, but I

00:28:48.040 just want to give a perspective on how truly massive these deficits are. They are not, they, they are

00:28:54.180 orders of magnitude bigger, many orders of magnitude bigger than anything we've seen outside of the

00:28:59.980 world war II period before or after. So what's going to happen? I believe Trudeau will try to get a

00:29:05.780 majority. And once he does that, there'll be massive tax increases. You ask what a wealth tax,

00:29:10.480 that's nothing. The wealth tax raises $6 billion, according to the parliamentary budget officer.

00:29:16.560 They might claim that that's their big solution. We've got a $380 billion deficit. You're not going

00:29:21.980 to get rid of that with a $6 billion tax. They would need massive new, uh, income tax, uh, GST

00:29:29.720 increases, business tax increases, increases in every tax you pay in order to keep spending like

00:29:36.900 this. There is no mathematical way to go on doing what we're doing. Uh, and if, and the

00:29:43.500 parliamentary budget officer says, so you don't, you don't just have to believe the conservative

00:29:46.740 finance clinic. Just the other day, the parliamentary budget officer said, we've got one, maybe two years

00:29:53.200 like this before we collapse. Um, so, um, it is a crisis situation and, uh, we're the only party

00:30:01.440 that has foretold this problem and we're the only private party that can get the country out of it.

00:30:06.240 Well, it, you know, it's kind of interesting when you talked about the second world war, Pierre,

00:30:09.940 because the, the, the spending initiatives and the programs that the government would have

00:30:13.820 introduced at the time were by their very nature, temporary. You know, the idea was to go and fight

00:30:19.640 a war and stop the Nazis and protect freedom around the world. Uh, but, but what we saw with the,

00:30:25.440 with the great recession or the great, yeah, the great recession, 2008, 2009,

00:30:29.220 you know, the Harper government at least tried to make it so that the temp, the programs were

00:30:33.580 temporary, that the, that the stimulus spending that they introduced and some of the bailouts

00:30:37.740 were, were, were temporary in measure. I think that that's easier said than done. And, you know,

00:30:42.740 certainly what we saw in the United States was just a proliferation of bureaucracy. And that's

00:30:47.420 what tends to happen during these sort of so-called crises when government has to grow to fill the

00:30:52.820 need. So, you know, with, with the CERB, I mean, first of all, the, the numbers themselves are

00:30:57.860 incredible. I saw in the Globe and Mail last week that I think that a household income during COVID

00:31:03.220 fell by $21 billion, but during the same period, government transfers increased by $54 billion.

00:31:10.000 So Canadians might've hardly even noticed. Uh, they actually might've been better off 0.99

00:31:14.460 during COVID than they were working, you know, night and day to try to pay the bills. Uh, a lot of

00:31:20.740 people have suggested that perhaps it's time for the government to introduce some kind of a

00:31:25.440 universal basic income or to transition that CERB, uh, benefit over to a universal, you know,

00:31:31.540 it doesn't, it doesn't really sound like that's sustainable financially though. Uh, what is, is

00:31:35.940 your, is there a concern, uh, on the conservative side that a lot of the programs that Trudeau has

00:31:40.340 introduced are permanent? And if a conservative government were to win, that they would be

00:31:45.940 criticized for, you know, the, the same vicious line of attacks you get, oh, bringing in austerity

00:31:51.460 and cutting and, and, and, and all these kinds of, uh, accusations that we see over and over

00:31:56.260 again.

00:31:58.260 Okay. No, there's a lot, a lot in your question. Let me start quickly with your comments on the

00:32:03.540 Harper era, uh, stimulus. So the economic action plan was worked out to about 2% of GDP and,

00:32:11.600 uh, we had a deficit, uh, of three and a half percent of GDP. So again, right now we're at 17%

00:32:18.240 of GDP in a deficit. So it was like, we're, we're, we're just talking orders of magnitude

00:32:23.420 difference, uh, um, six times bigger deficit in relative terms, again, adjusted for inflation

00:32:29.560 and the size of the economy. Secondly, we did lapse those programs. Every single stimulus

00:32:35.140 program we brought in during the great global recession, uh, ended in 2011 and we had real

00:32:41.780 reductions. No, not just real nominal reductions in spending in every single year that followed.

00:32:48.120 In 2012, 13, 14, and 15 federal government spending actually went down. And we did that

00:32:54.680 without, by the way, cutting healthcare or education, both of which went up. So it is

00:32:58.980 possible to manage down the cost of government and relieve taxpayers of their burdens. And

00:33:05.020 finally, one last point. We never once raised taxes in the entire tenure period. We were in

00:33:09.620 office. So all of these things are possible. Now on the, um, basic income. So we've had,

00:33:16.480 I've had the parliamentary budget officer cost out various models of a basic income and there

00:33:22.880 is no model that comes in below $73 billion a year. The cheapest model anyone has been able

00:33:30.980 to put forward was Kathleen Wynne's approach, which she did a basic income pilot project in 0.98

00:33:37.080 Ontario that would pay an individual $17,400 and a couple $24,000. Um, that would be 75% of the

00:33:47.280 poverty rate. Um, so, and it would be phased out at a rate of 50 cents for every dollar a person earned.

00:33:54.440 Um, and so that was the model that she designed. I said, Hey, parliamentary budget officer, if we did

00:34:00.000 this federally, how much would that cost? And he said that would be about $73 billion. So that,

00:34:05.740 that is a lot less generous than the serve by the way, which is $2,000 per person, uh, and 4,000

00:34:12.320 for a couple. So the, uh, the high end, we're looking at $200 billion or higher, uh, for, uh, a

00:34:20.300 program, um, of that nature. So that would be half of the typical budget of the government of

00:34:25.120 Canada. It would be five times what the federal government spends on healthcare transfers. It would

00:34:29.880 be 10 times what we spend on the armed forces. It would be, um, one last thing, it would be six

00:34:37.840 times what we collect in GST revenues. So, so there's no one out there that has any explanation

00:34:43.820 of how you pay for it. And the difference between this idea and so many, uh, liberal spending ideas

00:34:50.340 is most liberal spending schemes are undesirable. Um, this is mathematically impossible unless you're

00:34:58.160 prepared to eliminate, um, whole departments and programs and, uh, at multiple levels of

00:35:06.260 government to find the, the fiscal space to pay for it, which nobody is proposing by the

00:35:11.080 way, then there, it is mathematically impossible to pay for it. And, and I, I, interestingly, I

00:35:17.240 don't, I have not yet heard the liberals openly advocate for a basic income. So it is possible

00:35:23.820 that someone at finance sat them down with a calculator and very slowly walked them through

00:35:28.860 what, what I just, what I just mentioned. Um, but listen, every day I'm shocked. Like

00:35:35.820 I, I, I, I always know, I always knew I was more fiscally conserved than these guys are, but every

00:35:41.540 day it blows me away. The things, the amounts of money they're willing to spend and the things

00:35:46.780 they're willing to spend on. So nothing would surprise me. Well, it's funny because, you know,

00:35:53.340 we just had Bill Morneau as a finance minister for five years. And during that time, you know,

00:35:59.040 we saw a bunch of reckless spending decisions. We saw growth of debt, growth of deficits. Uh,

00:36:04.280 we saw it, like I mentioned, the top, uh, income tax rate in Ontario go above 50%. Uh, but now as soon

00:36:10.860 as he's gone, all of a sudden it's like, he's being remembered as this like fiscally conservative blue

00:36:16.140 liberal. It's like, I don't, I don't really remember seeing that very much, uh, while he

00:36:19.980 was doing, doing the job up here, you, you mentioned that you think that, uh, Justin Trudeau

00:36:24.320 is going to try to get a majority government. Do you think with this throne speech coming

00:36:28.560 up here that we are headed into election season? Cause it does feel like Trudeau is doing a lot

00:36:34.260 of sort of election style announcements and it almost seems like they're kicking into a election

00:36:39.500 mode here. What do you think? I think he needs an election and there are, uh, I will say

00:36:45.660 two reasons why he needs an election quickly. One, he needs an election before the money runs out.

00:36:52.380 Um, as I mentioned, the debt levels and the spending levels are unsustainable. The parliamentary

00:36:58.380 budget officer says he's got one, maybe two years. So he needs the election done before the financial

00:37:04.180 collapse occurs so that, uh, he can, he can run on this fairy tale that money will continue to fall

00:37:10.780 out of the sky and everything's free and we'll just put it on the credit card and we won't ever

00:37:15.660 repay that credit card. Um, and he thinks he can swindle an election victory off of that fantasy one

00:37:22.540 last time. And then the brutal hard truth will kick in a year and a half later, but he won't care

00:37:27.580 because he'll have a majority. So that's the first reason. Second reason he needs an election

00:37:33.260 is because there are some very ugly truths that are being, that he's hiding that will become known

00:37:40.700 soon. Uh, one, uh, the ethics commissioner, the lobbying commissioner, potentially the RCMP

00:37:47.180 and the auditor general are all investigating the we scandal. Um, that will not only produce guilty

00:37:53.180 verdicts and in the case of the lobbying commissioner, outreach criminal charges in some cases, uh, for

00:37:59.580 certain people, but, uh, it will also produce reports that will show what went on behind the

00:38:05.900 scenes. Uh, and I'm sure there's much, there, there's much more there than we know of. Uh,

00:38:10.620 the commissioner has the power to call documents and people and it's obstruction of justice to lie

00:38:16.780 to the commissioner. Um, so that's going to come out. There's a, an investigation into the

00:38:23.820 prime minister's chief of staff spouse lobbying for government contract,

00:38:28.620 government contracts and subsidies, uh, lobbying his spouse's office. Um, that is likely to be

00:38:35.260 under investigation, at least by the lobbying commissioner. Um, finally, uh, the auditor general

00:38:41.740 is investigating, uh, a, a, what I think is a brewing scandal that no one has noticed, which is that

00:38:47.500 there are 20,000 missing infrastructure projects. So the government has said, we have funded 52,000

00:38:53.740 infrastructure projects. And I said, okay, great. What, give us a list. So they gave us a list with

00:38:58.940 32,000. So we have said, so where's the rest of it? And they say, oh, we can't tell you, you know,

00:39:05.820 so these are secretive. It's impossible to build an infrastructure project in secret. They're big,

00:39:11.500 loud, noisy affairs. There's guys in hard hats and machines thumping away. You know, if there's an

00:39:17.660 infrastructure project happening, it's not a secret, right? And there would be a list of where,

00:39:21.980 when, how much it costs to build these projects. Um, but they don't have the list,

00:39:27.100 which means that the money went somewhere it shouldn't have. And the auditor general is

00:39:30.700 looking into exactly that. And I think that report will come out in late spring.

00:39:35.180 Long story short, Trudeau needs an election out of the way before any of this stuff comes out.

00:39:40.380 And that's why I think he's going to push for one in the fall.

00:39:43.340 So you said that that report's coming out late spring. What, why is it going to take so long?

00:39:47.500 That's the nature of, uh, auditor general examinations. Um, you know, they have to track

00:39:53.900 billions of dollars of spending. Um, the purported infrastructure spend is something like $9 billion a

00:40:01.420 year. And so the, the AG has to go through all the departments. These are spread out of all these

00:40:08.380 departments in Ottawa. They're also involving the provinces and the municipalities. So it just takes a

00:40:14.140 long time, by the way, the auditor general is underfunded. Um, the AG's office is short about

00:40:20.220 $11 million. So one thing Trudeau doesn't want to spend money on is auditors. It's yes to everything

00:40:26.620 else. He doesn't, you know, doesn't care who you are or what you're asking for money for it.

00:40:30.140 The answer is always yes, unless you're an auditor, in which case the answer is a firm no.

00:40:34.460 The only person in Ottawa who hears that, no. Uh, he believes in austerity for one office,

00:40:42.860 the auditor general. Well, I, okay. So let's, let's talk about the Wii scandal. Cause I'm,

00:40:48.620 we all watched it, uh, with, with a lot of interest. I feel like you're, you're right,

00:40:52.540 that there was a lot of liberal MPs and people that were testifying sort of alluding to the fact

00:40:57.740 like, oh, you know, we were just working so hard and it was so crazy and we're just doing our best

00:41:02.460 to, to try to help Canadians during this difficult time, sort of setting up the idea that sure we

00:41:08.540 didn't do all the due diligence that we probably should have in, you know, shipping $400 billion

00:41:13.740 out the door in just a matter of a few months. But for, for, for people who maybe haven't been

00:41:19.100 glued to their, uh, computer screens, watching, uh, parliamentary committee testimonies all summer

00:41:24.940 appear, maybe you can just kind of give us a, a brief overview of, of the Wii scandal. So tell us

00:41:30.060 what happened, how did it happen and where are we now? Well, what we know now is that it,

00:41:36.460 in the early part of the pandemic, early April, uh, the Kielberger brothers, uh, began aggressively

00:41:43.340 pitching key decision makers in the cabinet, the staff and the bureaucracy on this idea of a social

00:41:52.300 entrepreneurship program. This was going to apparently teach young people how to be entrepreneurs,

00:42:00.060 in the social sector. And, you know, they, they went around the hill and no one was really interested.

00:42:07.420 Um, but then, and, and this was going to be a small program, you know, I think it was 20 or $30

00:42:11.660 million. Um, but little did they know that there was a much bigger price. Um, and so the government

00:42:18.300 said, well, we might not be interested in your social entrepreneurship program, but we've got this

00:42:22.380 way bigger initiative called a paid volunteer program. Of course, that's an oxymoron. Um,

00:42:29.980 if you're a volunteer, you're not paid. If you're paid, you're not a volunteer. Um, but, uh, you know,

00:42:34.700 Orwell warns that whenever there's an abusive language, there are other abuses at work. And so

00:42:41.500 anyway, he, uh, the, uh, we brothers say, great, forget about this stupid entrepreneur program we had 0.99

00:42:48.060 last week. We'll do a paid volunteer program instead. Uh, and, uh, you know, we were originally 0.98

00:42:54.460 trolled by the liberals that the whole thing was cooked up by a bunch of bureaucrats in a Gatineau

00:42:59.980 departmental building. But we learned later that no, no, no, no, it was not cooked up by them at all.

00:43:05.740 It was initiated by Bill Morneau, who had been on an illegal $41,000 vacation with the

00:43:12.860 Wee brothers. Uh, it was cooked up by Bardiff Chagher who had telephone conversations with

00:43:18.940 Mr. Kielberger and told him, uh, to put together a proposal on the subject. It was cooked up by,

00:43:25.820 there were two senior staff, uh, policy advisors in the PMO, one of whom Kielberger credits with having

00:43:34.380 played an important role in designing the whole initiative. So it was cooked up by politicians

00:43:40.300 and their staff. And it just so happens, this is the crux of the matter. It just so happens that this

00:43:45.660 is a prime minister whose family had received a half a million dollars from this group. So the group

00:43:52.780 pays the Trudeau family a half million and the Trudeau government pays them a half billion, which is a

00:43:57.660 phenomenal return on investment. They should really be advising Warren Buffett, uh, on how to get an ROI.

00:44:04.460 Because I don't think he's ever produced any kind of return like that. Um, and of course, um, so here

00:44:10.460 we are now, uh, the matter has been for parliamentary committees that have now been shut down due to

00:44:15.260 due to Trudeau's prorogation. But worry not, we're going to reconvene those studies. We're also going,

00:44:21.020 we also have investigations by the lobbying commissioner, the, the, the, uh, ethics commissioner,

00:44:27.740 and potentially the RCMP, though they never confirm what they're investigating.

00:44:32.300 The liberals have this weird ability. I mean, I remember during SNC-Lavalin, uh, Gerald Butts resigned

00:44:37.580 and presumably he resigned as a admission of some kind of guilt or responsibility. But during his

00:44:42.700 resignation, he sort of insisted that he had done nothing wrong. And lo and behold, a couple months,

00:44:46.860 he's back working for Trudeau again. This time around, we saw Bill, no Bill Morneau resign. Uh,

00:44:52.940 but he sort of inexplicably, he, he said they had nothing to do with this. We scandal that he was

00:44:58.380 at the center of it. He just happened to have wanted to go pursue, you know, an international,

00:45:04.140 uh, career with the OECD instead of leading, uh, the finances of a G7 country. Uh, so, so at this

00:45:12.940 point, has there been anyone who is, you know, taken responsibility on behalf of the liberals?

00:45:18.140 Is there anyone that's admitting blame or are they still insisting that they've done nothing wrong?

00:45:24.460 You know, Trudeau has admitted he should have refused himself, but I think that's a complete

00:45:29.100 distraction. It suggests that he was a passive player and that something was brought up to his

00:45:33.740 desk and that he should have got, got up from his desk and walked to the room. In fact, I think he

00:45:39.020 and his team were the, um, the ones who initiated it all. Uh, so, um, he's cleverly apologizing for

00:45:49.100 the smallest part of the offense while trying to, to distance himself from the biggest part,

00:45:55.580 which is that he and his staff actively participated to extend a half billion dollars to a group that

00:46:02.380 had paid his family a half a million dollars. It just sort of defies logic as to why they would

00:46:08.780 even want to get involved in this. It seems to me, as soon as the decision that the funding

00:46:14.380 proposal became public, it was, it was immediately a scandal. The media immediately said, well, wait a

00:46:19.660 minute, you know, all of these ties to liberals, all of these family ties to Trudeau and Morneau.

00:46:25.180 I mean, you just sort of wonder like who, who, who's running things at, at the PMO. Who's,

00:46:30.540 who's running things as a government where they wouldn't even acknowledge the, the appearance of

00:46:34.860 what would obviously be a conflict of interest in trying to ship, like you said, I think it was half,

00:46:40.060 half a billion dollars to, to it in, in, in, in money and then an additional hundred,

00:46:45.260 couple hundred million dollars to actually administer this program. So it was, it was 912

00:46:50.300 million dollars total. I mean, did, did they not see that this was going to be a scandal

00:46:54.860 in, in the making?

00:46:55.660 No. And I'll tell you why. And the book of Proverbs could tell you why. Pride precedes

00:47:01.580 destruction. Remember, Justin Trudeau was the master of the universe, running the, running the

00:47:08.700 universe from his cottage, from his cottage front steps in April and May. And this is where I think

00:47:18.780 the media should apologize to Justin Trudeau because they filled his head with all this

00:47:24.620 hubris. They, they were going around Ottawa. It's hard to remember this now, but in April,

00:47:29.580 May, and even June, the media had basically taken the position that no one should be allowed to

00:47:34.620 criticize Justin Trudeau. Here we are in the middle of a pandemic to criticize him would be to be playing

00:47:39.820 politics and to be putting lives on the line. And anyone who criticizes Trudeau is effectively

00:47:47.420 committing treason and endangering public health. They beat up Andrew Scheer. They said, oh,

00:47:53.740 Scheer wants to bring back parliament. What the hell do we need parliament for? Don't we all realize

00:47:59.100 that now is the time to just gather around the footsteps of, of Rito cottage and let the prime

00:48:05.260 minister come out and bestow wisdom on us daily. And I was regularly attacked. I would go on Twitter

00:48:13.500 and I would tweet something critical and there would be this, these paradas in the, in the press 1.00

00:48:18.300 gallery would come at me and, you know, I'll look at him. He's gone off the deep end. He's Italian. 1.00

00:48:22.140 Everyone else is rallying around our prime minister now. And here you have this, this black sheep who's 1.00

00:48:27.180 out here, uh, standing all by himself. And, and, and, you know, I think he said to himself,

00:48:31.820 I can do anything I want, you know, he, no one questions anything. Um, there, it seems that the

00:48:38.860 normal parliamentary accountability mechanisms are, uh, obliterated. So I think the group of

00:48:45.420 them around Trudeau said, we, we, we now have unfettered access to the public purse with no

00:48:51.260 scrutiny. And anybody who asks us a question about it, we'll simply accuse them of nasty partisanship

00:48:56.780 in a, in the middle of a pandemic. And, uh, and we'll assert our pure motives and we'll do whatever

00:49:02.540 the hell we please. That's what I think that that's where I think their headspace was. And

00:49:06.700 frankly, I think if the, the media had been doing its job, he probably would have been on his toes

00:49:11.420 and he probably wouldn't have been so sloppy. Well, maybe, maybe the media is doing a service

00:49:16.700 to Canadians after all, then by letting him have his guard down. I, I, I totally remember that because

00:49:21.260 I remember a couple, uh, columns coming out of the Toronto star basically saying, why do we need

00:49:25.900 question period? Uh, the, the, the, the government gets held to account every morning by these

00:49:30.780 reporters asking questions. And it's like, you know, True North did an analysis of those questions

00:49:35.340 that were asked. More than half of them were coming from the CBC. You know, they were, they were positive

00:49:39.740 in nature. They weren't asking questions about, you know, and anything that was serious about

00:49:44.140 government. It was always like, you know, Hey, how was your weekend? How are you coping? Did you get a

00:49:48.700 haircut? You know, these kinds of questions. So, uh, what, one, one last question about the

00:49:53.900 Wiescat, it seems like a lot of times with these scandals that the coverup is worse than the crime.

00:49:58.940 And I think what we saw right before parliament was probed, uh, there was a document dump. So I

00:50:04.300 think you got 40 or 50,000 emails. Most of them were heavily redacted. And, and you made that point

00:50:09.580 that, you know, we, we don't really know what's in these documents, but of the things that weren't

00:50:13.580 redacted, the timeline kind of came into place and it seemed like there were some major contradictions

00:50:18.700 between what the liberals had said, uh, and, and what really happened, particularly your point

00:50:23.580 about how the civil service wasn't really the one recommending it. It seemed like it was more

00:50:27.260 something that was led by minister, uh, Chager, but you know, part, part of the issue is that,

00:50:33.660 you know, by the time Justin Trudeau came and testified, he kind of was giving a different answer

00:50:38.620 than he had been for the previous few weeks. All of a sudden he was telling us something new. And it's

00:50:43.980 like, well, you know, why is the prime minister saying new information now when this has been in

00:50:48.300 the press for a month? Do you think that the, that the, the liberals were sort of trying to be too

00:50:53.900 cute that if they had come out from the get go and just explain what would have happened, Canadians

00:50:57.900 would have forgiven them, but it was because of those sort of the evolution of the storyline and

00:51:02.300 the evolution of, you know, when did Justin Trudeau find out when did the civil service recommend

00:51:06.380 these, this, this contract that that's ultimately what's going to going to get them in trouble here?

00:51:11.340 Yeah. I think so. I mean, look, the, the story, the truth is ugly in this one. I mean,

00:51:17.020 whenever you have a prime minister's family getting paid a half a million dollars and then

00:51:21.980 he turns around and hands a half a billion to the group that paid them, uh, you've got a serious

00:51:27.820 scandal, uh, potentially a criminal one. So there's no doubt they had big trouble based on the facts,

00:51:34.060 but you're quite right. Um, covering up things that were ultimately going to come out has just made

00:51:39.580 it worse. You know, you look at a chugger. Um, she comes to our committee denies that she ever met 1.00

00:51:45.900 with, uh, or spoke with, with the Kiel burgers, uh, about the Canada student service grant. And it

00:51:52.140 turns out she did. Um, we have, uh, the prime minister saying his office wasn't involved in the

00:51:58.460 decision. Well, we have correspondence showing that two of his senior advisors were directly involved.

00:52:04.060 One of them helped design the very program that we're talking about. Um, you know, we have, uh,

00:52:09.500 Bill Morno's office, Bill Morno saying basically, oh, it had nothing to do with me. I was just, um,

00:52:15.580 the minister responsible, but it was all the bureaucrats. Well, now we know that by the

00:52:20.060 bureaucrats own internal correspondence that they said that, uh, he was, that the minister's office

00:52:25.420 was insisting on it and that they were quote besties, besties. His office was besties with the,

00:52:31.900 with the we brothers. Uh, and that's a quote, um, you know, the bureaucrats who are supposedly

00:52:37.980 enamored with this program called it a quote, shit show. That's a quote right out of the email 0.99

00:52:43.660 correspondence. Um, the, uh, they, you know, Trudeau said, oh, the bureaucrats told me there was no other

00:52:50.060 organization with the capacity to run this program except for we, well, we now have treasury board

00:52:56.080 secretary of bureaucrats who said they didn't believe we could run the program. So it just, all of these

00:53:01.620 lies that are so obviously contradictable for which there's documentary evidence. I don't even,

00:53:08.660 I don't know why they bothered telling all these lies. They should have just come out and said from

00:53:13.100 the get go, look, um, we got excited. We did something we shouldn't have. There was an obvious

00:53:19.220 conflict of interest. It was all our fault. Uh, you know, give us a good licking in the press for

00:53:25.900 a week and then we'll try to move on. That's, I think the better, it would have been the better

00:53:29.900 strategy. They still would have been in a lot of trouble. They would have been found guilty,

00:53:32.860 but at least there wouldn't be this whole series of lies that have been exposed little by little

00:53:39.320 each day. So that leads me to another thought that I have. And I hear from a lot of Canadians

00:53:45.520 about this. It seems like Justin Trudeau really is above the law. He acts like he's above the law.

00:53:50.640 He has this sort of arrogance that he is. He has repeated ethics violations. He repeatedly

00:53:56.140 gets told by the ethics commissioner that he has violated the conflict of interest act. And yet

00:54:02.680 there doesn't really seem to be any repercussions. You know, he has a slap on the wrist, a minor fine.

00:54:08.020 I mean, if, even if he is found guilty of violating, again, the conflict of interest act with this

00:54:15.060 weed scandal, you know, it will, it will lead to him actually losing his, his role as prime minister.

00:54:21.900 So what, what can the government do to hold Trudeau accountable? You know, is it creating another set

00:54:28.500 of laws? Is it, is there anything that can be done to actually stop an individual who is a repeat

00:54:34.600 offender of, of these acts that are designed to hold these politicians accountable?

00:54:40.800 Well, look, I was the parliamentary secretary who passed the accountability act. It was my job to take

00:54:47.240 it through committee and through the house of commons in 2006. So all of the laws we're talking

00:54:52.900 around right now, the lobbying act, the conflict of interest act, uh, they were all partly my creation.

00:54:59.660 And so I support them, but here's the thing is you can't, at the end of the day, you can't replace

00:55:05.500 the, uh, what Churchill called the, the mighty power of a little man walking into a little room with a

00:55:13.260 piece of paper and putting it in a little box. Uh, and that of course is the voter. Uh, the, the voter

00:55:19.060 has to decide that they're not going to put up with it anymore. Um, at the end of the day, you can have

00:55:24.840 all of the law enforcement bodies you want coming out and making findings of guilt, but if the voter is

00:55:31.160 not going to hold them accountable for it, then he's, he is, uh, has impunity. Um, there is a weird

00:55:39.420 psychology among the political class in Canada that Justin Trudeau is special for that. Yes,

00:55:46.580 of course, if any other junior candidate had worn blackface, they would have been not even been

00:55:51.960 allowed to run the party's ticket, let alone lead it. Um, that, uh, if anyone else had been found

00:55:58.100 guilty of trying to stop a criminal prosecution, they'd immediately have to resign from cabinet.

00:56:04.080 Many have resigned for much less, um, that there would be criminal charges, uh, and there should

00:56:10.780 have been criminal charges for taking a $200,000 vacation from someone who was at, who was successfully

00:56:18.920 lobbying you for a $15 million grant. It's right in the criminal code. It's, I think it's one section

00:56:24.580 122. It's a, it's a criminal offense. Um, but the RCMP didn't pursue it. Uh, and, and I think it's

00:56:31.820 for Justin, it's like, you know, he's the son of a former prime minister and he's youthful and bashful.

00:56:38.060 And there's something kind of, um, um, something that there's sort of a, uh, an, an instinct to

00:56:45.920 protect and forgive him among the political class that exists for no other political figure in this

00:56:51.380 country. Um, and, uh, you know, I think it would take an actual psychologist to do an examination of

00:56:57.740 how it is that, uh, the system has been so forgiving of the many, um, uh, uh, scandals and in some cases

00:57:07.540 crimes that he's committed. That's a really interesting, uh, perspective. I, now, now I want

00:57:13.280 to interview a psychologist and find out what, what's going on. I think so. I mean, there's

00:57:17.540 something there. There's something there. Yeah, there is. Well, I, I do want to ask you a little

00:57:21.560 bit about the 2019 election and the new conservative leader, Aaron O'Toole. So, you know,

00:57:27.560 to me, the conservatives won the 2019 election. You guys got the popular vote. You increase your

00:57:33.180 vote count, your seats in, in every region. Uh, Andrew Scheer did a hell of a job standing up to

00:57:38.020 a media that was pretty biased against him. Um, but the sort of consensus in the media was that the

00:57:44.080 conservatives lost and that Andrew Scheer needed to go. And he sort of agreed with that and stepped

00:57:48.160 down. Uh, from your perspective, why, why do you think that Justin Trudeau got reelected and why

00:57:54.300 do you think the conservatives failed to ultimately really sort of win in terms of at least getting a

00:57:58.840 minority government? Well, you, you, you, you're quite right. The, I think Andrew Scheer deserves a

00:58:04.500 lot of credit for the successes you enumerated when he became leader. No one gave us a hope of even,

00:58:09.740 uh, reducing Trudeau to a minority. There was a talk that he would have the biggest majority ever

00:58:14.900 after the longest honeymoon ever, uh, of any prime minister. Look, he got 33% of the vote. It's the

00:58:22.860 lowest share of the vote of any prime minister in Canadian history. Um, uh, many prime ministers

00:58:28.840 have been defeated with, by getting a larger share of the vote than he got winning it. Um, so, um, he

00:58:35.940 had an incredibly efficient distribution of votes. I don't think any party in Canadian history has

00:58:43.220 gotten so many seats with so few votes. Um, and I don't say that, you know, as an excuse, it's

00:58:49.100 obviously a tribute in part to their strategy and how they have allocated the resources. But, you know,

00:58:56.100 this is not a popular prime minister, uh, and he can, he, he returns to office with an extremely weak

00:59:02.080 mandate. Um, and, but that said, uh, no majority prime minister had been defeated after just one term,

00:59:10.560 uh, since RB Bennett in the middle of the great depression. So history, uh, the math, the media,

00:59:17.240 and a whole series of other things were against Mr. Scheer at the time. Uh, and, um, I wish we had

00:59:23.780 done better as does he, but I think we can take solace in the fact that we didn't reduce them to a

00:59:28.940 minority and hopefully we can put an end to the government before they do too much damage. 1.00

00:59:34.220 So, uh, Aaron Atul is out to a really good start. I would say he's come out strong. Um, I would

00:59:40.080 argue that he's probably not as conservative as Andrew Scheer in terms of his social views, but

00:59:44.600 he seems like he really has hit a populist note. And we saw that with his Labor Day message and his

00:59:50.520 new Canada first economic strategy. So I was wondering if you could describe the ways that

00:59:55.620 you think that Aaron Atul is, is different than Andrew Scheer and, and how the sort of strategy would

01:00:00.920 be for Aaron Atul to become the next prime minister.

01:00:03.260 Well, I think, uh, Aaron has a lot of strong attributes. He's a veteran, a businessman. Um,

01:00:11.660 he has strong roots in the parts of the country. We need to win in order to form a majority government.

01:00:17.900 I think you're, you're right. He has struck the right tone. Um, I've always believed that the free

01:00:23.460 market, uh, is the best way to serve the working class and the poor. Uh, and, uh, by contrast, 0.96

01:00:31.460 what we have is government controlled corporatism that enriches those who have the most political

01:00:37.080 influence at the expense of everyone else. Um, we, we can campaign against that. And I think it

01:00:42.600 will be very popular and yes, populist to do so. Um, so I, I agree with you. I think he's off to a

01:00:48.060 good start and if he can continue with that momentum, uh, he'll be the next prime minister.

01:00:54.000 One of the interesting things we're seeing again, speculation with this throne speech,

01:00:58.540 but the idea that the liberals have moved so far to the left that the NDP doesn't really have a

01:01:03.220 place anymore. And you see Jagmeet Singh, I mean, he was the real loser in the 2019 election. They

01:01:09.020 just got decimated in Quebec and, uh, reduced in, in British Columbia and, and a lot of other

01:01:14.280 strongholds. It feels like there's not really a lot of room on the political spectrum for, for

01:01:19.460 seeing at this point. And then you have Aaron O'Toole sort of putting forth this Canada first

01:01:24.440 strategy. And, and, and when I say populist, I mean, sort of speaking more to working Canadians,

01:01:31.200 blue collar Canadians and people that might traditionally be part of that NDP voting based

01:01:36.420 union members and that kind of thing. Uh, do you think that that is part of the conservative

01:01:41.120 strategy is to, is to, to capture some of those voters that may feel, uh, not represented by a sort

01:01:48.360 of cosmopolitan environmentalist, uh, NDP movement? Yes. And that has been a problem for the NDP for a

01:01:56.520 long time now. You'll recall that the NDP used to be very strong in Saskatchewan, in, uh, rural British

01:02:05.280 Columbia, uh, in parts of Manitoba. Um, and they lost that because they became an ultra urban, uh, white 0.99

01:02:16.860 collar elite, um, socialist party faculty club, socialist party. Um, and they forgot about working

01:02:25.460 class people and farmers. Um, and so where, where the roots of the party were among farmers and workers,

01:02:31.360 they're now among activists and, um, loud mouths and protesters and people who, who get paid to go

01:02:40.780 around screaming and hollering and smashing things, uh, and theorizing all day. And that's not,

01:02:46.620 particularly a big market to pursue. And that's why I think you see more and more working class 0.98

01:02:52.100 people are attracted to the conservative message. Uh, and, uh, we're winning, we win in places like

01:02:58.220 Oshawa and in, um, rural Saskatchewan and, um, in the North in Northern, um, Northern Ontario. Uh,

01:03:08.260 so a lot of mining towns and assembly line constituencies where that you, the NDP used

01:03:15.420 to take for granted are now becoming conservative because they see us representing their working

01:03:20.300 class family values. Interesting. So do you have any, any predictions for the fall? It's going to be an

01:03:27.400 interesting time with, uh, thrown speech potentially going into an election and, and sort of more uncovering

01:03:34.400 things from your committee, the finance committee with the, we scandal, any, any predictions for the

01:03:38.620 fall here? Yeah, I, I think Trudeau is going to do as much, do anything he can to get an election.

01:03:45.440 If, uh, he can't get the proposition parties to vote down his speech from the throne, uh, or his fall

01:03:51.660 update, then he might just go to the governor general and say, I'm calling an election. The challenge

01:03:57.800 for him will be that people will say, okay, why are you calling an election? If you've passed your throne

01:04:04.020 speech, you passed your update, you passed all of your COVID spending, what would a majority give you

01:04:09.740 that you don't already have? And of course, the only answer is it would allow him to lock in power

01:04:15.820 before people find out how broke we are and before the scandals become fully public. Uh, and that's not a

01:04:21.960 very good justification to ask people for a majority. Uh, you know, please give me a majority so I can cover up

01:04:27.800 scandals, liberal scandals. Um, uh, I, it doesn't sound like much of a slogan. So I think he's in a,

01:04:35.320 he's in a bind. Uh, and, uh, the only thing that can help him is if Jagmeet Singh really jumps in and

01:04:40.840 tries to defeat him, which would be irrational for the NDP. And we know that might be the reason they

01:04:46.940 do it. Interesting. And then just final question for you here. What do you think the biggest challenge

01:04:52.040 for conservatives is, conservatives are in this country and in bringing down this Trudeau

01:04:57.580 government? Well, I think the biggest challenge is telling people the warning. It's not a fun job,

01:05:06.640 but warning people about the fiscal catastrophe that's coming and being, uh, you know, sounding

01:05:13.260 that alarm before everyone realizes there's a fire. Um, you know, and people say, well, why are you

01:05:19.520 pulling the alarm? Well, it's because there's a fire. Well, we don't see the fire yet. Well, believe me,

01:05:24.640 it's there and it's coming and you're going to see smoke and flames very soon. And so we have to

01:05:30.160 be, you know, the bad guys who come and explain that things cost money and that we're eventually

01:05:35.460 going to run out of it. Um, that is a very difficult job to play at some point when we've

01:05:40.500 indicated and everyone will say, Oh, they were right all along. But by then it's too late. The

01:05:45.600 damage is already done. So that is the biggest challenge, but you know, we have to be happy

01:05:50.200 warriors and get out there and make the case. It's the right thing to do and the country will

01:05:54.360 be better off for us doing it. Well, you, uh, you certainly have your work cut out for you,

01:05:59.040 especially considering, you know, all the things we talked about, how the sort of media adoring

01:06:04.920 Justin Trudeau and seeing that he can do no wrong and the sort of liberal stronghold that exists in

01:06:10.100 Ottawa. But Pia, we really appreciate your time. Thank you so much for coming on and explaining

01:06:14.480 all of these concepts to us and help breaking down, uh, everything from an insider perspective.

01:06:19.400 We really appreciate your time. Thank you so much for joining the true north, uh, speaker

01:06:22.740 series. Great to be with you. Thank you so much.

The Candice Malcolm Show - September 17, 2020

Ep 12 ｜ Pierre Poilievre ｜ Holding Trudeau to account

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